On Friday, April 21, 2006, 11:37:17 PM, Maciej wrote:
MS> A) I agree that changing what "event" or "evt" means for XHTML or
MS> HTML event handler attributes is out of scope for SVG.
When you say "changing", which is the published specification that would
change? I ask because as far as we can tell there isn't one. But yes if
this were to change W3C-wide it would be WebAPI that would likely own
that spec.
MS> B) However, in the case of SVG, adding "event" as a second supported
MS> name for the implicit event parameter (or replacing "evt") would
MS> clearly be in scope for the SVG WG, and clearly out of scope for Web
MS> API and CDF. To make this change in a separate spec would require
MS> directly contradicting the SVG 1.2 Tiny spec as written. Therefore I
MS> strongly disagree if you think some other working group should change
MS> what SVG means.
I agree and when this was discussed in the group, adding 'event' to SVG
alongside 'evt' was clearly something SVG would do to help with
harmonization.
MS> C) I strongly disagree that "event" should be deprecated instead of
MS> "evt". There are many orders of magnitude more HTML documents than
MS> SVG documents, thus where the two disagree on a point of arbitrary
MS> naming it is much more sensible to change SVG. There is really no
MS> significant way in which "evt" is a better name than "event", so the
MS> change that results in less content changing is the better one, if we
MS> want this to eventually be harmonized.
Did you count the number of VoiceXML documents as well? The cost of
changing VoiceXML implementations is pretty high, since they tend to be
in mission-critical places.
To be clear - 'evt' is what specifications based on DOM Level 2 and DOM
Level 3 have been using for a while now. 'event' is what HTML browsers
have in practice been using, in an undocumented way.
To ask all specifications that have i good faith used DOM Levels 2 and 3
to change is asking a lot. Then again, to ask the legacy HTML
implementations to change immediately is askig a lot too.
This is why adding 'event' to SVG is suggested, to help with HTML+SVG CDI
cases; but deprecating the otherwise undocumented 'event' over time and
keeping the standardized 'evt'.
--
Chris Lilley mailto:chris@w3.org
Interaction Domain Leader
Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
W3C Graphics Activity Lead
Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG